I don’t want to, but I believe Paul Pierce

“We’ve got to come together as a group and understand we still have a shot at this,” said Paul Pierce, who tied Kevin Garnett for the team lead with 23 points. “We have tremendous depth when people are healthy. We know we can play when we’re right. We know what we can do when we’re right.” ESPN

Ughh. I watched the first and second quarter of last night’s Celtics game against the Thunder. I walked away for about 10 minutes after the first quarter and came back to see the Celtics down 22 points late in the second quarter. The game opened up. Youth was bashing old, Paul Pierce was playing power forward, and Durant and Westbrook weren’t sweating at all. So I turned the game off, marking the second time in one week when I’ve turn my back on this team.

Yes the Celtics made a run and cut the monstrous Thunder lead to single digits but literally every game in the history of the NBA has runs like that. It happens. The NBA is crooked.

But it was Pierce’s comments after the game that swayed my thinking just a tad. When this team is healthy, they are solid. Not good, not great, but solid. They can play with some of the best teams going. I doubt for a 7 game payoff series, but they can hang around with the best of them. And this team is deep. The young guns are seeing huge minutes in the absence of Rondo, Bass, Wilcox, and O’Neal (see Avery Bradley below).

So it’s hard to go against Paul Pierce’s word. Ahem, words. It’s hard because this team can be as painful to watch as “The Office” at times(new episodes of course). But you can’t go against the captain. Even if 80% of Boston doesn’t know who Keyon Dooling is.

This team won’t win a championship this year, but when healthy it could be a long and interesting playoff run.